“This book says that men lose their senses when they hear a shot,” Grégoire said, pointing. “If I shoot that pistol, you’ll fall into a state. I’ll prove to you that it would be immoral to marry.”
Jeremy almost scoffed at him, but there was just enough of a question in his own mind . . . “If I became violent, I could injure you,” he pointed out.
Kill him, more likely.
“I’ll duck behind the screen,” Grégoire said, pointing to a tall screen just by the window, designed to hide a chamber pot. “You won’t know I’m here. Remember, you won’t be yourself.”
“Then how will I know what happened?”
“We could summon a witness.”
“We’ll have a hundred. You’re talking about shooting a pistol in the middle of the night.”
“Obviously I would shoot out the window,” Grégoire said. “You can shoot the weapon yourself, if you prefer.”
“I do prefer,” Jeremy said. An “accidental” death might be within Grégoire’s capabilities.
“If others hear the shot and join us, it will simply prove my point, won’t it?” Grégoire moved over to the sideboard. “I need something to steady my nerves. Whisky?”
The man was hoping to befuddle him. Jeremy was growing more curious about this demonstration by the second. Men had committed murder for the title of squire, let alone marquess.
Grégoire handed him a glass of whisky.
Jeremy tossed it back with a silent apology to Lady Knowe. Grégoire obviously didn’t know that he was unaffected by whisky, whereas Grégoire had been notorious at Oxford for his inability to hold his liquor.
He poured himself another glass and refilled Grégoire’s as well. “Shall we drink to my marriage?” And, meeting Grégoire’s stony gaze, “No?”
“To the gods of war,” Grégoire said, drinking.
Jeremy didn’t join him, as those particular gods were no friends of his. “You surprise me,” he observed. “Those gods surely failed you when I returned safe and sound.”
“You may be safe, but sound?” Grégoire’s smile flickered like a serpent’s tongue. “Let’s drink to the exquisite Lady Boadicea.” The ghost of a French accent hung around Grégoire’s vowels; the whisky was already affecting him.
“Queen Boadicea was a failed warrior, much as you were,” Grégoire said, raising his glass. “It must create a bond between you.”
Jeremy tossed off the toast and put down his glass.
An icy sensation was building in his chest. Grégoire was right about one thing. The thought of a red welt across Betsy’s cheek made his heart stop. He had carried her home from the brewhouse; her bones were as delicate as a bird’s in comparison to his.
If he mistook her for a soldier and threw her against a wall . . .
He might kill her indeed. A shard of agony speared through him at the thought, throwing him back onto the field where flies circled the faces of dead men, and every death was his fault. If he . . . if that happened to Betsy or to anyone he loved, it would flay him to the bone.
For months, he had sat in a corner of the billiard room and shook silently, trying to barricade his mind against the memory of war and failing. It had been quiet in the corner, and dark.
No sounds, no smells, nothing to rip him out of his fragile hold on reality and hurl him into the past.
He’d been a coward.
“You think that a gunshot would do it?” he asked hoarsely.
“Look what happened at Vauxhall,” Grégoire said. “You can simply shoot my pistol out the window. We’ll call it an accidental shot that happened while I was cleaning the weapon before leaving tomorrow.”
As if anyone would believe that Grégoire cleaned his own weapons.
Jeremy rubbed his hands over his face, thinking. He had nothing to lose, because he actually was sure of his own mind. It wasn’t whole, by any means. But he had spent months staring into the dark, brooding over what happened.
The darkness didn’t own him any longer.
“Right,” he said. He shoved open the window and pointed Grégoire’s pistol into the darkness.
“Aim at the sky,” Grégoire cried.
The sound exploded in the small room with the force of a cannon.
Chapter Twenty-five
Betsy woke at the sound of a gunshot. She sat up, shocked to find she was naked, shocked to find she was alone.
Footsteps pounded down the corridor and paused. “If you have a man in there, send him down,” her aunt bellowed. “There’s a burglar in the castle!”
Betsy swung her feet out of bed. The moon was shining in the window, but she couldn’t see her nightdress. She pulled on her wrapper and knotted it tightly. No slippers, but the boots she had worn to the auction stood against the side of the room. She stamped into them and started out into the corridor.
She followed loud voices to the library and froze in the doorway.
Jeremy was lying on the floor, her aunt kneeling beside him. Her heart skipped a beat. She threw herself across the room and dropped at his side. “Is he shot? Is he—”
“No,” Aunt Knowe barked. “There’s been a damned fool game and when he wakes up, I plan to kill him myself.”
“No blood,” Betsy said on a gasp, her hands flying over Jeremy’s chest. He felt warm, his heartbeat reassuringly strong.
“Yet he’s insensible,” her aunt said, frowning. She was holding his wrist, counting his pulse.
“Jeremy doesn’t play games,” Betsy said. She stood up, trusting him to Aunt Knowe. Prism was there; servants milled about. Jeremy’s father burst through the door. A smell of gun smoke lingered in the air.
Grégoire was just where she would have expected, off to the side wearing an expression of elaborate concern. She marched toward him, brushing past the butler.
“What did you do?” she demanded. Unlike the rest of them, he wasn’t dressed for bed. His shirt collar was ripped and he wore no wig. His hair was disheveled.
She was startled to see true dislike in Grégoire’s eyes, though his troubled expression deepened. “My cousin and I discussed the impairment he had suffered in the war.”
Everyone turned to look.
“And?” Betsy demanded.
“My cousin shot the pistol out the window to prove to himself that he suffered no ill effects. Unfortunately there were effects. He attacked me.” Grégoire waved his hand to indicate his torn collar.
“Nonsense,” Aunt Knowe said flatly. “If Jeremy attacked you, you’d be dead.”
“I might have been,” Grégoire retorted. “Luckily my valet was able to subdue him.”
The marquess had been crouching beside his son, but now he rose and came to stand at Betsy’s shoulder. She glanced up, surprised to realize that Jeremy had inherited more from his father than she realized. The marquess’s amiable countenance had taken on an altogether darker cast.
Grégoire moved sharply and then clarified, “My valet saved my life!”
“It appears your valet struck Lord Jeremy violently on the head,” Aunt Knowe said. “He’d better hope that His Lordship recovers quickly.”